What is there to know about the different Boroughs? Different areas of the boroughs etc?
Im specifically interested in living in Manhattan.
Jeff
Well then the main thing you need to know is…bring pots and pots and pots of money with you. Manhattan’s right up there with Tokyo.
Beyond that, can you be a little more specific? NYC is an infinite subject :).
It’s expensive
Well, i did say “Different areas of the boroughs” and i DID mention Manhattan.
Is that “a little bit more specific” than NYC?
Jeff
Right off the bat:
-You will not need a car and it’s just an added expense you won’t be able to afford
-A studio will run you at least $1200 a month and probably much more.
-Bars close at 4:00 or later.
Welcome. I think you’re going to need to narrow this down a bit. The five boroughs have hundreds of different neighborhoods. Where do you think you’d like to live and how much money would you like to spend?
A first step might be to go on craigslist’s housing section and type in what you think you’d be able to pay. If it’s $5000 a month the world is your frickin’ oyster. If it’s $500 you may have to adjust to the idea of three roomates, bars on the windows, no closet space, and a long walk to the nearest Starbucks.
To pitch in for my own nabe, I like Harlem just fine. It’s cheap, the apartments are usually quite big compared with other neighborhoods, I have a view of the river (New Yorkers are always going on about the fact that they have a view of 1/5 of the Chrysler Buolding and direct sunlight for 45 minutes a day … it’s not uncommon to have a view of a brick wall even in an expensive apartment), and there’s a good park right across the street (which, granted, is built on top of a sewage treatment plant), and everything I need is pretty close by bike, bus, or train (although not the C, dammit). It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, however. It’s dirty, loud, and on the personal safety scale somewhere between Orlando and Baghdad. I’ve never been mugged and never had a car break-in, though, and I’ve lived in such neighborhoods for 20 years or so.
If you’re looking for a good deal and don’t need to be close to the centers of power and fashion (and don’t need to be able to look down your nose at anyone), I recommend Jersey City. It’s a lot cheaper than NYC, an ethnic food paradise, and in many spots you’re still half an hour on the train from much of Manhattan, closer than you’d be in similarly priced encalves in Brooklyn or Queens (or the northern end of Manhattan, for that matter). People who haven’t poked around downtown JC for ten or fifteen years would be surprised at the extent it’s cleaned up its act. Of course, people will make fun of you for living in Jersey if they’re pretty sure you won’t beat them up for it.
In Manhattan everything you could ever want is within a five block radius. The air isn’t fresh and it is noisy. If you have the money Manhattan is a great place to live.
I live in Brooklyn. The borough is as big as any city. Its neighborhoods are mostly divided by ethnicity. There are lots of things to do in Brooklyn, but the places are more spaced out than in Manhattan. You can find a decent apartment for $1000 rent. It is not as noisy and polluted as Manhattan is and you will find it a lot slower than Manhattan is (most people are in rush in Manhattan). The thing that stands out about Brooklyn is that you can have one Italian pizzeria in the middle of a Jewish neighborhood. The interaction among different ethnicities makes Brooklyn stand out in the world. That is why Spike Lee filmed Do The Right Thing there (about a Italian Pizza place in a Black neighborhood.)
Brooklyn and Queens are huge. There are so many different areas and lifestyles available in those areas.
When you move here, is it just you or do you have a wife and kids?
What are your main concerns?
Do you want to live close to your job?
Do you want room in your apt?
Are you going to school?
If you have to live in Jersey, I would recommend Hoboken instead if JC. I don’t care what anyone says, JC is still pretty ghetto. Other than the Target and the Bertucci’s, it hasn’t got much else going for it. Unfortunately Hoboken is becoming almost as expensive as Manhattan.
Manhattan is obviously the best place to live if you can afford it. People here basically tend to be defined by their neighborhoods (oh I live in the Village, the Upper West Side, Soho, etc) and their tiny appartment. Chelsey is pretty gay. Below 14th is kind of artsy. Anyone from Jersey or the other Bouroughs is B&T (Bridge & Tunnel). Most people eat out a lot. Takeout mostly but also restaurants. Social life pretty much revolves around bars, lounges, restaurants, clubs and usually starts anywhere from 9-12 and usually consists of dinner and then hopping from bar to bar until whenever.
During the summer a lot of New Yorkers get shares in shore houses. Jersey Shore (Belmar, Spring Lake, LBI), Fire Island and The Hamptons are popular (in order of prestige from least to greates).
I can tell you a bit about my neighborhood, Yorkville, which is on the upper east side of Manhattan. I’m fairly new to city living but am enjoying it immensely. Up this way, it’s a lot quieter than in midtown, it’s 5pm, I’m on the first floor, and there isn’t a peep of street noise at the moment, though a car will come by pretty soon. All of your day to day needs can be taken care of within a stones throw, and you can get an immense variety of things within a 15min walk.
Having a car is expensive if you get a parking space (think $200-300/mo), or inconvenient if you park on the street. The subway is great if you live near the station, I’m a scant 15min walk from the station, so a typical trip on the subway is at least 30min door to door. Not bad for a day of shopping, but not a trip to take for a slice of pizza.
I find I have more sense of community and neighborhood now than I did in the burbs. I know my local deli guy, the clerks at the supermarket, the video store guys, the pizzeria guys, the barber down the street, the doormen, the florist, etc. I pass these people whenever I walk through the hood, in the burbs, I passed them in my car, no chance to interact at all.
Um, you just judged an urban area by its shopping mall. The waterfront in JC is pretty boring, but so is Wall Street after 8 PM. The actual city is inland a bit.
The time to move to Hoboken was 1985 – it now offers high rents, overpriced restaurants, wall-to-wall fratboys from around the world (no offense if you’re one of them, it’s just not my cup of beer), and (granted) a few good venues for live music. Jersey City is ghetto (ahem) in the sense that, yeah, odds are your neighbors might well be black, Filipino, Cuban, South Indian, Bangladeshi, Dominican, Vietnamese, Italian, Pakinstani, Polish, East African, Caribbean, and Chinese. Scary. The similarly priced areas of NYC (say, Washington Heights or Bushwick) are not much different in ethnic makeup and median income, and also don’t have much else going for them – that’s why they built the wonderful, 24-7 mass transit system, to get you to the movies and bars and museums. What the hell do you think the East Village looked like 20 years ago, anyway?
Of course, we still don’t know how much money the OP has to spend. I hope he didn’t go right to the personals on craigslist because that will be the end of that…
Well the thing is that “fratboys from around the world” (IOW educated people with high paying jobs) generally like to live in neighborhoods with decent restaurants and bars. Hoboken is popular with those folks because it has easy access to Midtown and Lower Manhattan and you get more for your money than in Manhattan. JC has also become popular as a substitute for Hoboken.
I would recommend living in Manhattan, even if you have to get a couple roomates. It’s quite an experience.
Not nearly specific enough. New York is a little bit of everything. If you want meaningful information about it you’re going ot need to ask meaningful questions.
Oh, and for what it’s worth, although I’m sure you were in no way attempting to be snarky in your reply, you certainly managed to come across that way to this NY’er. You may wish to make a better effort to help the people who are trying to help you. Trust me, it will make a big difference once you show up here.
wrenchslinger
Given that the boroughs comprise NYC, I’d say no.
What’s it like up in northern Manhattan, up past Harlem? Is it any cheaper there than in the downtown/midtown areas?
I’ll chime in with a related question, if I may. How “distant” from Manhattan do you feel if you live in Brooklyn, Queens, or The Bronx? Do you feel you can easily travel on the subway to hit all the hot Manhattan spots, and return home the same way, or do people tend to avoid using the subway late at night? For me, part of the point of being close to the action is being able to hit the same without having a 3-ton albatross around your neck, otherwise known as a car, that must be soberly driven a long distance home.
I feel pretty safe during the day and evening and even late night if I’m alert, so that means no heavy drinking if I’m travelling alone. Trouble is, the subway doesn’t travel to my neighborhood; it’s a two-mile walk with a cemetery on one side and a park on the other, so I don’t do it at night. I have to wait for a bus. It can take 20 minutes or so. The outer boros just don’t get the services Manhattan does.
OTOH, I get to own my own place with birds and trees around for less than a Manhattan rental.
I suppose you could get a taxi for those last 2 miles home, or would that take longer than the bus all told?
Rental prices have been risnig of leate in upstate Manhattan (Inwood and Washington Heights areas), but I know a number of people who have relocated there from the outer boros and they all love it. From all reports I’ve heard the neighborhoods are nicers, the scenery is prettier, and the aprtments to be had (for now) are usually bigger.
I find that people who work in Manhattan and live in the outer boroughs (in which I include Hudson County NJ) often take a lot of persuading to get back into Manhattan on a weeknight. (Note that most of my friends are between 35 and 50 years old and may in fact be lameasses.) Of course, the flipside of this is that those who live in midtown/downtown Manhattan usually can’t be persuaded to go to Brooklyn, Queens, or the Bronx – or Manhattan north of Central Park – for any reason. Those who drive cars are often (comically) restricted by whether or not they’ve obtained one of those legendary Good Parking Spots; if they’re near their building on a side of the street where they don’t have to move it for a few days, many people will just cancel all personal engagements to hoard the spot for as long as possible.
[Aside: a friend of mine who lived on the Upper West Side worked mostly at home but needed to keep a car for business reasons. She couldn’t afford a spot in a garage or parking lot, so when she needed to move it for alternate-side reasons, she would try to get a head up by moving her her car to the “illegal” side an hour or so early and sit in it with a coffee and the Times, so she could move it if a cop came by. Often, she said, the whole side of the street would be full of people doing just that – idling their cars, drinking coffee and reading, like a two-dimensional coffeehouse for agoraphobics.)
I don’t think there’s really any reason to be afraid of the subway at night anymore. The first car is for singles.
Personally, I find that I build a tolerance to travel times – just like an hourlong car commute that seems horrible at first gets easier as time goes on, 45 minutes on the subway just becomes a familiar part of your night, like brushing your teeth. (What, you don’t brush your teeth for 45 minutes?) Sure, there are weeknights when a long subway trip to see a movie at Sunshine or Film Forum seems like a fair tradeoff, and other times it’s a big looming pain in the ass and I stay home. I just think how people in West Texas will drive 6 hours for a high school football game and it doesn’t seem so bad. However, for most people doubling or tripling their rent to live exactly where it would be most convenient is not an option. You’d be better off putting that money into taxis.
I live near the Hudson and will often bike down the river path to locations on the West Side, even at night (in the summer, anyway). I hate biking on the streets, though, so I would never say this is a great biking city, but I can think of a handful of people who bike everywhere. Get a big lock and a worthless bicycle…